Pilot awareness; i.e. pilot situational awareness, is derived by continually monitoring aircraft critical parameters such as air traffic control (ATC) altitude restrictions, enhanced ground proximity warning system (EGPWS) floor altitudes, angle of attack, indicated air speed (IAS), vertical speed, and the like. A pilot relies on the status of various aircraft critical parameters to maintain spatial and aerodynamic safety. During normal flight situations, a majority of the monitoring activities may be offloaded to resources such as a flight management system (FMS) and automatic pilot (AP), thereby relieving the pilot of the monitoring duty and reducing pilot cognitive workload.
Non-normal flight situations impose manual monitoring duties on the pilot. Examples of non-normal flight situations include the unavailability of FMS and AP monitoring resources, severe weather, turbulence, and emergencies. Even when the FMS and AP are working properly, severe weather, turbulence, and emergency situations can adversely affect pilot situational awareness, distract the pilot from timely monitoring critical flight parameters, and raise the risk data entry errors.
Emergency situations require that the pilot additionally integrate emergency response tasks with monitoring activities and the derivation of pilot situational awareness. Since monitoring activities typically require a round robin manner of periodic and cognitively taxing parameter monitoring tasks, the pilot must switch focus frequently, thereby additionally taxing emergency response and overall safety. Emotionally arousing emergencies and events may even further tax cognitive bandwidth and human behavioral capacity for monitoring activities.
In summary, in the context of non-normal situations or prevailing emergencies, manual monitoring activities are highly challenging and increase safety concerns. Pilot training is only a partial solution because emotionally arousing non-normal situations may negatively affect cognitive bandwidth and human behavioral capacity for monitoring activities.
Consequently, a system and method for increasing pilot awareness in an aircraft during non-normal flight situations is desirable. The desired system and method generates an envelope of critical parameters surrounding the aircraft and alerts the crew when envelope boundaries are approached. The desired system and method intelligently unburdens the pilot of monitoring tasks, allowing the pilot to concentrate on the prevailing situation response and spend minimal cognitive and physical bandwidth on otherwise periodic and cognitively taxing monitoring tasks.